Professor Michael Turner will lecture on dark matter of the universe on Jan. 24. / Photo courtesy of Todd Adams

Written by

Krista Wright

Contributing Writer

The FSU physics department and the Tallahassee Scientific Society hosted a lecture by renowned astrophysicist Michael Turner on Jan. 23 and will host another on Jan. 24.

Turner is a theoretical astrophysicist in the astronomy and astrophysicist as well as physics departments at the University of Chicago.

He is also president of the American Physical Society.

Open to the general public with no admission charges, the lectures cover what the universe is made of and if it is getting bigger or smaller.

The lecture “Dark Side of the Universe: Beyond the Stars and the Star Stuff We are Made of” was held Jan. 23 in the College of Medicine Auditorium.

“Stars account for less than one percent of the material in the universe, and galaxies are held together by a mysterious form of matter—dark matter—that accounts for one-third of the stuff in the universe,” Turner said of his lecture in a press release.

“The other two-thirds exists in an even more mysterious form—dark energy— which is causing the expansion of the universe to speed up, rather than slow down, and controls its destiny. Though invisible to telescopes, the dark side of the universe has shaped what we see today and controls our destiny.”

The second of the two lectures, “The Big Mysteries of Cosmology” is, according to Adams, more technical regarding results of findings and more detailed with scientific knowledge and language.

However, it is still open to and aimed toward the general public.

“Deep connections between the very large —the cosmos—and the very small—quarks —have shaped the universe we see today and entangled the agendas of particle physics and cosmology, I will discuss the present state of cosmology and the big mysteries that point to new physics—dark matter, dark energy, inflation and the baryon asymmetry of the universe—and the prospects for progress,” Turner said of his second lecture in a press release.

Turner was invited to FSU to take part in the Lannutti Lecutre Series, a memorial lecture named after Professor Joe Lannutti who was part of the physics department for several decades.

The lecture series has been taking place at FSU for 16 years and has seen numerous experts in a range of topics from particle physics, to more recently, astrophysics.

Todd Adams, assistant Professor in the FSU physics department and coordinator of the event says he is optimistic about the turn out for this event.

“I am always surprised at the number of people that come out for events like this,” Adams says. “The auditorium seats about 250 people, and would love to see it mostly full.”

Adams says he has seen Turner speak multiple times, and he is always impressed with his ability to get the topic across to general audiences and encourages students outside of the physics department to come out for the lectures.

“[Turner] coined the term dark energy,” said Adams. “He is one of the world’s experts on it. This is going to be something that is going to be in the news in the coming decades. We are going to learn more about it. You are going to hear about it on the nightly news and you are going to get a chance to hear about it and gain some understanding. That is part of what college is about.”